Jack Dorsey | Founder, Square, Twitter

gets personal and talk about how to use philosophical wisdoms in literature and non-fiction to get by tough times in startups

Diane Greene | Founder, VMWare

the early founding of VM and getting the process right

Phil Libin | Founder, Evernote, CoreStreet

gets personal talks about tough times at Evernote, building lifetime epic work in startup

Dan Siroker | Founder, Optimizely

the philosophical algorithms of founding companies and getting it right through feedback loops

Balaji Srinivasan | Founder, Counsyl; Lecturer, Stanford

philosophical examination of new tech utopia, as the backbone of US economy and "political exit"

Mark Zuckerberg | Founder, Facebook

gets personal and talk about early startup years of Facebook, and hacking building constantly in Harvard

Need to think about how to succeed in Y Combinator interview and get into the accelerator, or better yet understand how to have super-fast legit reflex speed answers for a oral business plan fitting for Y Combinator? Checkout Paul Graham and Sam Altman's live office hour interview for 3 startup ideas, 1 admitted 2 failed. Ask yourself why and why not?

You can get a sense on my twitter account http://www.twitter.com/i_stanford if you filter by @startupschool or #startupschool #startupschool2013 I had Twitter on the entire time, so this is going to be epic.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Read about Evernote's new Post-It Note partnership product on Mashable.com You can now tag each color with smart tags, given them meanings, get free premium membership, and digitalize your doodles and blueprints with the help of 3M.

Post-It Note may not be the sexist product any more, but honestly, honestly, these four colors are pretty FLAT, yes, that means they are cool! >_< right? iOS7 is flat (though it may not be cool), but these vintage colors are making a come back. Electric blue? Just a little more neon than the flat blue. Not the same I know, but definitely some affinity. If I were 3M, I would turn these four colors to flat colors though. Then it would be perfect!

What about an Evernote green? What would you tag it with? Your answer may just be the brand value/image of Evernote.

The product is rather similar to the Moleskin Evernote notebooks, which have beautiful pressed cover filled with Evernote's popular logos and icons (the founder was very proud of the logo).

Then I can't help but noticed the wallet, seemingly simple. I immediately noticed to whom Evernote is trying to market. Can you guess what is the geo location of its potential customers?

If you have used the fast on-time metros of the far east, or their ever-so-abundant vending machines, you may recognize the tiny green card that is known as Suica (yes, our clipper cards might have learnt a thing or two from this one). Below is a "infograph" of the intended contents. Yes, all Japanese.

Evernote has achieved somewhat of a cultish status and popularity in Japan. The fan base was like the Mac Apple lovers back then. It is not too surprising that Evernote will boldly display these pictures on their American website. Japan is also associated with good modern designs, high quality, concise, and top-notch. Imagine, how people will feel, if these bills were Chinese (no offense to any one, i am just proposing a quick exercise of perspective)? It just doesn't say the same about design quality.